When the Astors Owned New York: Blue Bloods and Grand Hotels in a Gilded Age

by Justin Kaplan

Overview

In this marvelous anecdotal history, Justin Kaplan––Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of Mark Twain––vividly brings to life a glittering, bygone age.

Endowed with the largest private fortunes of their day, cousins John Jacob Astor IV and William Waldorf Astor vied for primacy in New York society, producing the grandest hotels ever seen in a marriage of ostentation and efficiency that transformed American social behavior.

Kaplan exposes it all in exquisite detail, taking readers from the 1890s to the Roaring Twenties in a combination of biography, history, architectural appreciation, and pure reading pleasure

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101218815
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	06/01/2006
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	208
File size:	13 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Justin Kaplan was an editor, biographer, and author of Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain and Walt Whitman: A Life, among other books. He was a member of the American Academy of  Arts and Letters. He died in 2014.

Table of Contents

Prologue     3
The House of Astor     9
Town Topics     27
Inventor and Novelist     55
Palaces for the People     67
"A New Thing Under the Sun"     81
After the Ball Was Over     99
Aladdin     112
"Mine! All Mine!"     139
Baron Astor of Hever Castle     160
End of the Line     175
Acknowledgment     183
Sources     185
Index     189

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

A gem of a book . . . No one since [Henry] James has written with such ease and grace about the era of excess as Kaplan. (Megan Marshall, author of The Peabody Sisters)

Mr. Kaplan, a dazzling stylist, is perfectly suited to his subject: what Henry James lovingly called æhotel civilizationæ . . . [A] splendid book about a bygone age that has not quite gone away. (The New York Sun)

author of The Peabody Sisters Megan Marshall

A gem of a book ... No one since [Henry] James has written with such ease and grace about the era of excess as Kaplan. (Megan Marshall, author of The Peabody Sisters)

Editorial Reviews

A gem of a book . . . No one since [Henry] James has written with such ease and grace about the era of excess as Kaplan. (Megan Marshall, author of The Peabody Sisters)

Mr. Kaplan, a dazzling stylist, is perfectly suited to his subject: what Henry James lovingly called æhotel civilizationæ . . . [A] splendid book about a bygone age that has not quite gone away. (The New York Sun)

From the Publisher

In our opinion (validated by two National Book Awards and a Pulitzer Prize!), Justin Kaplan is one of the best literary biographers around. This latest work from the acclaimed author of Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain offers an enticing slice of life in Manhattan's Gilded Age, an era dominated by two combative heirs to the Astor family fortune. Kaplan limns the lives of John Jacob Astor IV and William Waldorf Astor -- feuding cousins who erected the city's first luxury hotels as rival monuments to wealth, power, and conspicuous consumption. Social history at its best, this superlative biography recounts how one ambitious, aspiring family managed to impose its overweening pride, vanity, and ostentation in fin-de-siècle Manhattan.

bn.com

Mr. Kaplan is a companionable writer, and his well-turned sentences are a delight to read.

The New York Observer

An entertaining social history.

New York Daily News

Mr. Kaplan, a dazzling stylist, is perfectly suited to his subject: what Henry James lovingly called 'hotel civilization' ... [A] splendid book about a bygone age that has not quite gone away.

The New York Sun

A subject that proves more revealing of the nature of American democracy than many hefty social and political histories.

The Philadelphia Inquirer

Justin Kaplan's short but diverting tale of the career of the Astor family is told with gleeful humor and frequent sarcasm. He defines his subject as a commentary on the progression of taste and social attitude—and does it very well.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

A fascinating social history as well as a fun gossipy read. Kaplan has an eye for both the dishy details and the deeper meaning beneath them. This vision makes When the Astors Owned New York the best kind of history: entertaining.

BookPage

… Kaplan's evocative, witty and handsomely written little book reminds us that there were indeed giants in those days and that the Astors, for all their innumerable faults, were among them.
— The Washington Post

Jonathan Yardley